


Shorts from Moonyglen, NY

by signalbeam



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Casual Sex, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/F, Friends With Benefits, Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-06
Updated: 2012-06-06
Packaged: 2017-11-20 03:27:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/580798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/signalbeam/pseuds/signalbeam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gratuitous porn, transporting Rose, Kanaya, Vriska, and Terezi into a Buffy The Vampire Slayer-esque universe. You would think there'd be more plot than that, but there isn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. inextricable from the doing

**Author's Note:**

> Reposting some older stuff from tumblr. More of a series of concept sketches than a fic proper, really. 
> 
> But I've announced this shamelessly, and that absolves me of all authorial responsibility!

Rose doesn't believe Terezi is blind until she tries to lick the book. Terezi without a stake in her hand is contained, makes small, short motions with her arms to tap at the ground with her cane, and narrow, steady steps with her feet; the only part of her that stays the same is her head, which swivels around in smooth, even circles, chin raised and nostrils flaring and mouth curling into a secretive, twisting smile. 

Once Rose secures the book--one of Kanaya's newer and thus, more easily replaceable, volumes of demonology, but still--and sets it aside, she asks, "How have you not been culled yet?" 

"In every pailing cycle, one emerges from the brooding caverns," Terezi says. "A troll fused with demon strength, destined to protect trollkind from the undead, even after their idiot Watcher blinds them in a fight. I'm protected by the Council, which"--she raises her voice so Vriska and Kanaya, who are arguing behind the shelves, can hear--"is staffed exclusively by egomaniacs and incompetents! How did you get that?" 

"My mother had a penchant for experimenting with non-debilitating genetic mutations," Rose says. "Once she tried to make me grow wings." 

"I'm not talking about your eyeballs," Terezi says, dismissive. Her own eyes are gone, nothing left but a glowing red light coming from somewhere in her head. Rose finds this arousing, but in a comforting way. Terezi doesn't seem like she might accidentally stick her teeth into Rose's neck in the middle of the night. "I'm talking about your Watcher. Did she become a vampire before or after she arrived at your primitive America?" 

Vriska punches Kanaya. Rose can tell because of the way the metal plates scratch against each other, and because she recognizes, with old intimacy, the sudden swerve in shadow, the sound Kanaya makes when she's hurt, like she's gasping in the middle of a coughing fit. 

"The phrase for troll vampires is 'rainbow drinker,'" Rose says. 

"Blood sucking creatures who oppose the normal diurnal or nocturnal patterns of the species, who have noticeably worrisome complexions and/or glow in the dark," Terezi says. "You're deflecting, lavender." 

Terezi keeps a stake in her cane. She also has a blade. It's a very convenient implement, but unwieldy despite this. The light that blazes in her eyes--she turns it to the flash of Vriska and Kanaya with their teeth bared and this close to grabbing each other and, knowing trolls and their romantic habits, kissing. There's history between them, Rose knows. Former moirails during their youth, then dissolved. And now they look like they're planning on either kissing or killing each other. 

"I've always assumed it was a skin condition," Rose says. "She's part firefly, or so she said."

"If you actually believe that, then you'd be dead by now," Terezi says, and Rose can tell Terezi is looking at her, even though she's blind, even though her nose is pointed towards the shelves. "Ah, the crusty, stagnating blood of young, undead love." Terezi rubs her thumb over the cane. Rose sees the threat for what it is: both a promise and a seduction, textbook in its execution. But she still feels a primitive defensiveness raging in her hindbrain, and moving forward. 

*

They end up fucking in an alley of a human night club, to the sound of an alt-country band playing to an audience who came expecting electronica. The air smells sour like disappointment, but Terezi's eyes are delighted fire and faintly red in the dark. 

What strikes her as most impressive about Terezi, more than her physical attributes and more than the trollishness, is her tact--rare things, even from Kanaya, who takes pride in her special brand of inconsiderate kindness. She doesn't ask Rose if she's done this before, who she's kissed, if she's ever wondered about the flexibility and texture of a troll tongue before. She sucks at Rose's thighs, grinds her palm against Rose's slit. Her other hand rubs Rose's ass, encouraging Rose to spread her legs, until _open_ doesn't seem like invitation enough, not when Terezi's tongue fucks her swelling lips with fuck knows all slowness. Rose lifts her legs up, draws them to the side of her chest. Terezi laughs, and raises Rose higher. She pushes deeper, until Rose feels the press of that grin against her entrance, tongue twisting in, then up to her clit, and oh god, the tip of her tongue curls around her clit, pushing her towards a colorless, nerve-burning light. Then Terezi's fingers slide in and crooks. 

"Fuck," says Rose, and bites down on her thumb and shuts her eyes. 

Terezi says this is a hatefuck, but it's extraordinarily gentle and feels nothing like hate at all, just a tightening in her chest that feels dizzyingly like affection, or love. When she opens her eyes, Terezi is licking her fingers clean, smiling with extraordinary self-satisfaction that makes it clear that this isn't love at all, just a liking--but it's a furiously good kind of liking, hot and aching. She reaches over and touches Terezi's shoulder with her fingers, and the smug cheer on her face slips away to a fondness that betrays a lack of hate. 

Terezi crawls on top of her, hand flat against Rose's cheek, and kisses her. Something is pressing into Rose's right hip, something hot and insistent and moving. The kiss is long and _good_ , good in a way that makes Rose cover Terezi's chest with her hands, across the moving, expanding ribs and the curve of her abdomen. Terezi grunts, and guides Rose's hand to her hip. Rose hesitates, just for a moment. The red bands of Terezi's underwear slams it in: she really did just lose her virginity to a troll in the back of a night club she's been going to since she was fifteen. Her life is officially a paranormal romance, sold in a CVS next to Cosmopolitan and Seventeen. Terezi nuzzles Rose's jaw, then says, "Have you ever plucked a death chicken, Rose?" 

"That was so astoundingly unerotic that I'm seriously considering standing up and leaving right now," Rose says, undoing Terezi's pants. "Why does everyone think leather pants are a good idea?" 

Terezi thrusts her hip in response. Her pants are stuck around the absurd flatness of her ass--they decide to give up around the same time, Terezi giving the pants one final last tug and Rose's hand sliding down the front, sliding past the elastic band, and then taking a hold of something hot and firm. When she squeezes the bulge, it pushes back and snaking around her hand in pulses that are ungodly and blindingly brilliant. 

Rose knows there's a nook under the bulge that she can't reach, but Terezi seems satisfied with this, heel of her palm pressing on Rose with a calm, finger-clenching pressure. Rose props herself up on her elbow, admiring the heavy bulge around her wrist, then pushes her other hand between Terezi's legs and rubs. _This_ makes Terezi dig her claws into Rose's neck, makes Terezi's palm open up around Rose's face like a flower blooming. She leans in to kiss Rose, but misses twice before her tongue finds Rose's upper lip; her hips are fucking Rose's hands with furious desperation, in a way that makes the idea of more and further seem like a goddamn necessity. 

"Enough," Terezi says abruptly. She moves off of Rose, and turns away from her. She's having trouble with her pants. Rose gets up and helps Terezi with it, unpeeling the leather away from her skin and sneaking in some gropes as she goes down. Terezi's hand is working at her bulge, turning the bulge over and over again in her hand and wrist. Rose, from behind, reaches up for Terezi's nook. 

"You humans," Terezi says, her tone on one hand marveling and the other jeering, but when Rose thrusts her fingers into her wet center, she sees Terezi slam her eyelids shut. This part is familiar, something she's fantasized about, hot and fluttering around her hand, long before trolls entered her life, long before she became Rose the Vampire Slayer with the vampire watcher and a bruise on her shin that won't go away. 

Terezi clenches around her, and throws her head back into Rose's shoulder. She comes, messily, all over the alley and dear god, no wonder they talk about buckets. When she's done, she sags, surrendering with such vulnerability that Rose knows she'd only ever do this in front of another Slayer. 

Terezi turns over her shoulder, neck turning a few more degrees past human, and kisses her, long and slow, then stares at her pants. She smooths her hair back, and then does the same for Rose, tucking her bangs under her headband. While Terezi is still hopping back into her pants, Rose fixes her 'do. 

"Not bad for a human," Terezi says. And then: "Why don't you have any chastiteeth?" 

*

There's something that happens in the morning, when the human vampires go to sleep and on the other side of the ocean in Alternia, rainbow drinkers drag trolls out of their coons and into in bright, sunny spots of the street to die. Rose knows the symbolism and the significance and the shitty truth of it all: that there's high school and college, and then there are the demons, and then there are the more frightening, equally demonic faces of men and the things those faces can hide. These faces will be the last ones she'll see. 

The point is, that she never should have become a Slayer. Some Slayers are brilliant and promise redemption in the flash of their hair or the sharp point of their smiles, but she should have been a witch. She goes home. She takes a shower. She falls asleep at four in the morning with her cat in her arms, and wakes up at seven with the cat on her face. 

In the morning the library is open, and Kanaya is sitting in the back with the sun sliced apart by the corvid wings of her hair. Vriska is asleep, face in a book and glasses falling off of her nose. 

"You didn't take her to the motel?" Rose says, making sure to bump into as many chairs as she can. When Rose approaches, Kanaya makes sure to cover Vriska's neck with more hair. 

"She's too much trouble," Kanaya says, without a trace of affection, and with a careful suggestion of blamelessness. She's wearing her spare outfit, the one with the ruffles and v-neck and ridiculous disco-era colors. 

Rose sits next to Kanaya, and gazes at the book, too tired to read it. 

"Did you go on patrol last night?" Kanaya says, her tone suggesting a raised eyebrow even when she's squinting at a footnote. 

"I went out," Rose says. 

Kanaya looks up from her book. She puts it aside, crosses her legs at the knees. Her skirt hitches up, revealing her glowing legs. Rose reaches out, and places her hand on Kanaya's chest, where her heart must be. 

In the stillness, Kanaya grins, nervously, her mouth full of fangs. "You are being very inappropriate right now," she says. 

She wonders if it's there at all, if it's rotted away or if it's protected by ribs and blood and chest. Rose wonders if she can punch through it with a stake, or if she should spare herself the trouble and take off Kanaya's head instead. But then she feels something under her fingertips, a nervous echo of a heartbeat. No, it's just her fingertips trembling. 

Vriska stirs in her seat, lifting her head and squinting at the sun.

"Jesus!" she says. "Fussyfangs, close the curtains. Fuck."

Kanaya rises. Rose's hand falls back to the desk. Kanaya bends down, and kisses Vriska's hair, with mocking, icy, cruel familiarity. She keeps her eyes on Rose as she moves towards the window and shuts out the sun.


	2. dust of disturbed earth

Terezi and Vriska arrived in early April, and by mid-May, Vriska has moved into Kanaya's apartment while Terezi continues to live in the motel. Rose sometimes goes to Kanaya's apartment and is greeted by Vriska, glasses off and eye patch half on her nose, exposing the dark mass of scar tissue the stiff, dark fabric is supposed to hide. Kanaya has begun to spend hours lying in the pools of sunlight of her apartment with her back facing south, and her head turned, vulnerable and with swan-like grace, towards the sun. When Rose asks her questions, Kanaya responds with soft, half-thought out words, like she's drunk. Vriska watches them with a glaring jealousy that, in turn, makes the image of Kanaya drenched in sunlight repeat itself in the back of Rose's eyelids for hours and hours, like a mocking mental stutter. 

They go out to eat today, lunch for Terezi and a late night snack for Rose, at a late night diner twenty minutes out of town. Terezi has become restless and distracted over the weeks, preferring to sit and think after a slaying instead of fuck. Rose doesn't mind this as much as she thought she might. In a way, it's a relief, to know that she can stop for a while, that she can want without having, that she can want and not have and be content as well. She thinks Terezi's having a fight with Vriska again. She and Vriska, it seems, are always fighting about something, and the chilly separation between them is nearly certain to be a consequence of their charmless bickering. 

Terezi orders pancakes and short, squat little sausages. Rose settles for coffee and syrup-drenched challah French toast. Terezi swipes the slab of butter over the pancakes with her knife, dragging the melting cube until it thins into liquid and soaks into the fluff. The edge of her mouth pushes down into what is nearly a frown. 

Rose is staring at her own little dollop of butter, imagining they're Kanaya's eyes, when Terezi says, "What am I doing here, Rose?" 

Rose can tell that this is a more philosophical 'here,' but can't resist answering with, "Presumably, enjoying our delightful and grubless human breakfast." 

Terezi ignores Rose, as though she expected this, and continues, "We were supposed go back to Alternia two weeks ago. But Vriska is being a careless ninny and refuses to leave." 

'Careless ninny' is a very generous description of Vriska, Rose thinks, mostly because she is unkind, and the way Vriska looks at Kanaya makes Rose feel like someone is trying to pull the skin off of her chest. 

"She is," Terezi says, with a measured exasperation and disappointment in her voice as she salts her coffee, "in love." 

It's a remarkable thing that Terezi has forgiven Vriska for so much--her blindness, Vriska being Vriska and the millions of ways that she tries people--but sounds so exhausted by this, like she expected it, but didn't want it to really happen. When Terezi and Vriska descended on the town, they were like two storm clouds, shooting off red and black, pink and ash, everywhere they went. But lately when Terezi talks about Vriska, Rose pictures a polished, white stone, heavy and impossible to move despite its shape. Rose isn't blind. She can tell the romance is bleeding out from the two, all the color and shades sucked up by the enormous rationalizing machine of Terezi's mind. And she feels a warmth when she sits next to Kanaya on the windowsill, the remembered weight and heat of a girl with a metal arm and one eye out of eight. 

"With Kanaya, you mean," Rose says. 

"They're so pale for each other that it makes me want to tear out my own tongue and graft it to my ass," Terezi says. "Ugh." 

There's a special kind of elegance to Terezi's little noises of irritation and annoyances, the way that she doesn't use them as ways to sound out the inarticulate frustrations of her life, but uses them to sum up a host of feelings. _Ugh._

"It won't last," Terezi says. 

"You don't think so?" Rose says. She licks the syrup off her fork. 

"It didn't last time," she says, with the tightly guarded tone of one who knows their anger and resentment is unjustified and petty, but also knows admitting this would hurt them. She picks up a sausage with her fingers, and severs it in two with a snap of her unsmiling jaw. 

 

* 

 

They're both horny by the time Rose drops Terezi off at her motel room, Terezi aroused by the sudden hot anger she woke in herself at the diner, and Rose driven by the repeating but ever-shifting image of sun-drenched Kanaya's long neck and hair-covered face. Her cheeks morph into a blue-smeared canvas, the drowsy eyes and lazy smile into the insensate satisfaction of the well-fucked. She knows moirallegiances are typically nonsexual and sexless, but as she drives down the winding roads she reinterprets the reflection of the headlights on the road signs as a gleaming arm pushing into Kanaya's perhaps dark, maybe lightless cunt, with two fingers fucking Kanaya's mouth with a crude and heavy rhythm. When Terezi invites Rose in with her usual grin and lick of her lips, Rose says yes and nothing more. 

They screw in the bathtub, the lights barely enough for Rose to see. The bathtub is ringed with residue from the special kind of soap trolls require to scrub the sopor off their skin; some of it rubs off on Rose's bare arm, ceramic cool and powdery and generically dark in the gloom, when she finally settles on top of Terezi. Terezi's eyes are tamed and burnt down to glowing coals, but they flare to life again when Rose leans over and kisses her, and guides Terezi's bulge between her pressed thighs. It takes Terezi a few tries to find a way to glide her bulge smoothly between Rose's legs while still stimulating her clit, but when she figures it out, Rose is an ungraceful mess, forehead pressed on Terezi's shoulder and occasionally swearing at the long waves of pleasure that make her legs tense and roll together. 

Terezi's grip is firm on Rose's hips, occasionally encouraging Rose forward or back. She sucks at Rose's tongue with mischief, before licking the insides of Rose's lips, lightly on the top and then heavier and more sensual across the bottom, a reminder of what she can do, and has done with that tongue. Rose shivers, then presses down harder on the bulge, as though trying to envelop it between her, and the bulge twists, jerking higher so it slips more fully into her slit, then snaking into the cleft of her ass, fucking her with the slow torment that comes with sadistic good will. Rose rocks against Terezi's bulge, then tangles her fingers in that coarse, dark hair and tugs--this makes Terezi laugh, but not speed up, and Rose is frankly ready to hit her over the head with the soap dish. The tip of the bulge winds, lazily, against the cheek of her ass. Terezi has told Rose that bulges operate mostly with instinct, but can be willed into one course of action or another; it makes troll genitalia seem like badly trained dogs. Rose relaxes her legs, and parts them. 

"Excuse me," Terezi says cheerfully, as the tip of her bulge presses into Rose and slides in with ease, almost automatically curving towards Rose's g-spot. There's the usual one, then two near-miss, then the boneless tremble that accompanies first contact, and a low moan from both of them as Terezi shifts her hips. Both of Terezi's gray hands are back on Rose's hips again, pressing familiar patterns of shallow cuts and bruises into the skin. Rose twists against the bulge as more of it slips in, curling in on itself inside her. The base of the bulge pressing against her vulva and clit pulses, preparing for Terezi's own fast approaching orgasm; but there's a hard angle emerging along Terezi's cheek, the one submerged in shadow and pressed against the wall of the bathtub, instead of her usual happy arc, and that's enough to make Rose hesitate just a moment before coming. When she does come, it's enjoyable, but not especially mindblowing. Lukewarm, really. Terezi spurts just a bit inside of Rose before yanking out and covering the two of them with teal. 

Terezi strokes the insides of Rose's thighs, smearing the teal across Rose's skin. "It's a good color on you," she says, some of her cheekiness returning. 

"How well-observed and spotted," Rose says drolly, reaching between her legs and catching some of the color against her fingers, then wiping it on Terezi's cheeks. Terezi licks it off. Then she taps Rose's chest, and eases up so she can turn on the water. It'll be a fast bath, Rose thinks. At least this time she didn't get any of genetic material in her hair. 

She separates herself from Terezi and splashes water over her skin. Terezi takes a bar of soap and works a lather between her palms. Then, unexpectedly, she scrubs it into Rose's skin. It's a relief, to see that flash of Terezi's former self. Rose lets Terezi wash her, the drag of rough callus measured and respectful over her shoulders and back and stomach. 

"Were you and Vriska moirails?" Rose asks. 

"She's my Watcher. And not even a good one, at that." Terezi's hands soap up her thighs, dipping between them and patting the soft pad of fat over the pubic bone with teasing affection. Then Terezi leans into Rose, her breasts pressing into Rose's shoulder blades and the hard point of her chin on Rose's neck. "I don't know what we were. It doesn't matter. Vriska's been compromised." 

"By love," Rose says, the memory of the diner already faded and distant, as though it had happened a month ago. 

Terezi's hand goes still between Rose's legs. Then she says, "Maybe it was fated after all," and lays kisses across Rose's shoulders and neck. Rose remembers, though, that trolls have many words connecting fate with romance, and that there's no value attached to fate in troll culture, just the implicit knowledge of inevitability: fated fortune, destined doom, the constant anticipation of pain. Then Terezi has Rose sit on the edge of the tub, hands gripping onto her bony shoulders while she tonguefucks Rose, waiting until the water's nearly about to overflow to send Rose into a white-visioned orgasm. 

 

*

There's only one bed and one coon in the motel room. She sits for a while on the bed with Terezi pressed against her side. Terezi's watching human _Law & Order_, eyes narrowed with deep suspicion and no doubt criticizing botched protocol and procedures. Occasionally she'll kiss Rose, a light peck or nip to the side of Rose's cheek or jaw, and it makes her smile. After a while, she flips to a movie. It's a romcom, a troll movie called _A Young Highblood Falls In Love With A Troll Of Unknown Caste Despite The Advice Of The Troll's Elders And Peers,_ followed by the usual Alternian habit of summarizing the events of their tales in the titles. 

"Terrible," Terezi says, switching to an old rerun of _Troll Cheers_ instead, the tale of a constantly changing cast of gladiator trolls drinking in a bar after their matches. It's never had the same charm as human _Cheers_ , mostly because the actors in the troll version are too busy trying to kill each other with the props. It seems to amuse Terezi, though. Rose eases herself away from Terezi, but before she leaves, Terezi says, "Hold on." Terezi's face is blue-rimmed from the TV, but her eyes are steady and red. "Be careful around Kanaya."

"Because she's a daywalking creature of the undead?" 

"She can put people in a thrall," Terezi says. "Rainbow drinkers are more subtle than your human vampires! And more dangerous for it. All she has to do is look at you, and you'll want her for hours." Terezi turns back to the TV. "Maybe that's how she's tricked us into letting her live for so long." 

"By keeping us suspended in a state of blacked-out lust in her sordid sex den?" Rose says, and Terezi's mouth twists into a question. "Never mind. Have you ever encountered a rainbow drinker before?" 

"I've read about them," Terezi says. "But I know that the best way to deal with them isn't to sit on your hands and wait for her to snap and suck us all dry!" 

"She's not like human vampires," Rose says. "She's still in there." 

"You see what you want to see," Terezi says. "If your lusus were to come back to life, it wouldn't matter what she smelled like or what she asked from you, because she'd be back! That's what makes the undead dangerous. They don't let you move on." 

Rose, blandly, stares out the door and into the rising sun. Her mother _did_ come back. That's the joke. That's the funny part. Her mother died two years ago. Two days after that, a teenage facsimile of Roxy Lalonde showed up at her door, dealt with the lawyers in a loud and drunken way, and then went to Berkeley to get more degrees in astrophysics and ectobiology and transdimensional biophysics. She never even got a chance to figure out if she should grieve or not. 

"The other dangerous part," Terezi says, "is that you never know what will make them snap--" but Rose is far away in the past, back when her mother was alive, back when she used to sit on the pink bed and watch her mother work at the lab bench; back when. 

"Good night," she says. She makes sure to shut the door behind her.


	3. such moons, only paler

"Ugh," Vriska says when Rose arrives. It's a different kind of _ugh!_ than Terezi's, less a compressed abstract of a study of life and its frustrations, and more of a politer _arrgh!_ "What do you want, Lalonde?" 

It's after school. Rose has come here straight from classes; Kanaya's left her a series of vague, confusing text messages expressing How Much I Require Your Presence followed by Sorry I Didnt Mean That and Actually Itd Be Pleasant Having You Over But You Dont Have To I Can Find Other Human Company Later I Guess. What is Vriska doing up at this hour? "Is Kanaya in?" 

"No," Vriska says. "Came to stick your tongue in her ear?" 

"That's not nice."

"Neither's your face." She seems smug and happy about this brilliant and creative insult. She peers over Rose's shoulder, her hair scented with flowers. Literal flowers. Someone--Kanaya--has braided violets and dandelions through Vriska's messy locks. It's a nice look. "Pyrope didn't come with you? Thought the two of you were joined tongue-in-ass these days." 

"If that were true, I wouldn't be visiting you now," Rose says. "I'd be lounging in the pleasures of having my salad tossed." 

"What the fuck?" 

"You'll figure it out someday, I'm sure." 

Vriska scowls, then lets Rose in. 

"That's my chair," she says, pointing to the ornate, high-armed oak chair. There are scratches on the right arm, from where Vriska's clawed fingers dug in. When Rose sits on the more comfortable couch, Vriska prickles, as though to protest, then shuts her mouth. "Aren't you going to ask where Kanaya is? She's getting food. For me. As her moirail." 

"I'm so happy for you," Rose says, with the barest amount of irony she can let herself get away with. "She texted me during the last period of school. I thought she'd be here." 

"Maybe she got hungry," Vriska says, conspiracies chewing through her words with insidious suggestion. 

"Crime in broad daylight, I see." 

"What?" Vriska says, voice as sharp as the metal that makes up her hand. "What did you say?" 

Sleeping with Terezi Pyrope confers certain advantages, nearly all rooted in data. She knows about the loss of Vriska's vision eight-fold and arm, the circumstances of the accident; she knows that Vriska's new arm can punch holes in concrete. She knows Vriska can put her to sleep. She also knows that Vriska will try to scare her, but she won't--she can't--harm Rose. Not directly. Rude and ill-mannered and violent girl as she is, Vriska Serket won't risk losing both Kanaya's good will, nor the last dredges of Terezi's. 

So Rose folds her arms and says, "If she's gone out in the middle of the day, the most likely explanation is that she's gone to snack on the local populace. Unless her moirail is kind enough to stop her." 

Vriska's fingers dig into the wood. "Hey," she says. "You wanna do everyone a favor? Shut the fuck up." 

"A sore spot with you, I see," Rose says. "I understand. You feel guilty." 

"I never feel guilty," Vriska says, with savage self-deceit. "Never." There's a short moment. And then Vriska's eye flares blue.

 

*

 

When she wakes up, Vriska is curled up in Kanaya's lap, spindly legs pushed up to her chest, arms wrapped around Kanaya's neck. Their chins rest on each others' neck, and every now and then they take the time to whisper to each other. The intimacy levels have to be excessive, even for moirails. No one needs that much skin-to-skin contact. 

She sits up. Kanaya jerks; Vriska peers over her shoulder, and glowers at Rose. Rose hopes she's interrupted them in the middle of an important confession, and makes sure to smile pleasantly at Vriska in return. 

"You've awakened," Kanaya says. 

"I was just having some trouble sleeping," Rose says. "Vriska was happy to provide assistance." 

Vriska flips Rose the bird behind Kanaya's shoulder. Kanaya buries her face in the side of Vriska's hair and closes her eyes, as though to say yes, she knew something like that must be the answer to why Rose would be asleep. It's a fond gesture. She fingers the flowers less than delicately, and doesn't look upset when the tip of her claw punctures the petals. 

"You said you wanted me over?" Rose says. 

"Oh..." Kanaya blinks, like moons shutting out. She separates herself from Vriska again, this time making sure that they're not touching at all, and goes to sit next to Rose on the couch. She looks at Vriska, just momentarily, before speaking. "Er, you see," she says. "The Watcher's Council and I have located the source of the demonic seed in your town and believe that after exterminating it, there will be no need for a Council presence. Your duties as a Slayer will also be terminated. I'll return to Alternia." 

"Wow," Rose says. "Sounds thrilling." 

"Why?" 

"She's being sarcastic, dumbass," Vriska says. 

"Oh." Kanaya, momentarily, puts her hand on Rose's knee. She licks her lips, with a desperation that glistens on her mouth. 

"I'm sure you two have plenty to talk about," Rose says. "I'm going home, unless there are any more morsels of import that you've decided to just now reveal to me." 

"Allow me to accompany you to your car," Kanaya says, rising as Rose does. She goes over to Vriska, and leans over. Vriska kisses her like a disgruntled cat. 

Even in the parking garage in the basement of the apartment building, Rose can see the sun just over the trees, casting a heavy and unsubtle orange light. Kanaya hovers next to Rose, sometimes looking at Rose and sometimes averting her eyes and staring at the leaves. She's very inelegant when she's not with her books or on her computer or carrying her chainsaw, like someone's freeze-framed a face in mid-word, except all the time. 

When they reach her car, Kanaya sits on the hood. Rose, after a moment, joins her. The slope is uncomfortable, just enough to make her feel like she's at risk of tumbling over the edge. The sun and the spruces are just visible, but at an angle. It's nearly summer, Rose thinks, with such banality that she finds herself more depressed by her lack of originality than the incoming arrival of heavy, humid heat. 

"I'm sorry for what Vriska did," Kanaya says. "She shouldn't have." She sounds proud of Vriska, in a way, proud in the way that Vriska had sounded. Proud of her moirail for being dangerous; bragging, in an unsubtle way, about her pacification abilities. But unlike Vriska, she sounds like she actually knows what an apology is. 

"Well," Rose says, "she cares about you." 

"Remarkably, her accident seems to have granted her several abilities, one of which is apparently being able to extend her awareness noodles to people who aren't her. It's baffling. I'm glad." 

The crickets are beginning to come out already. Does it bother Kanaya, to hear them? Does Kanaya like to eat them--does it keep Kanaya from going to sleep, do they have crickets wherever Kanaya and Vriska are planning on running to--surely there will be. It's not as though trolls have ever been fond of tundra. 

When they first met, Kanaya said that she had been watching Rose for a long time. Jade tells Rose that she was trolled by someone who Typed Very Fussily, and since Kanaya arrived, Rose has noticed, on her patrols, fresh flowers by her mother's grave. Rose is willing to overlook a good deal for Kanaya: Vriska, the whole 'being something I'm supposed to slay,' for lying about the rainbow drinker thing. Rose decides to keep that last one to herself. If she says it, she'll have to talk about it with Kanaya, and she doesn't just yet. 

"So where is this nexus of demonic activity?" Rose says. 

"The university." 

"I always knew the professors were strangely zombie-like." 

"With the way they invoke the names of dead men so often, I'm surprised there aren't more incidents there," Kanaya says. "We will prepare an offense, or, more sensibly, jump into the jaws of a trap and hack our way through the belly of the metaphorical but likely to be literalized beast." Kanaya hops off of the hood of the car, her skirts flaring around her ankles in a little poof, before settling again. "Why don't you take tonight off," she says, with her usual condescending Watcher's kindness. "I will let you and Terezi know when Vriska and I have thought of something." 

"Or when you need us to come with a revision," Rose says, teasing. 

"Subtlety is not the only way to win a war," Kanaya says, her lips pursing into nearly a pout. 

"The next time I need surgery, I'll be sure to call on you and your chainsaw." 

"It'll never trouble you again," she says, solemnly. They laugh, quietly, together. Rose gets into her car. She doesn't realize she's left her head out, craned towards Kanaya until Kanaya moves forward, shyly and apprehensively, as though they're two girls kissing under the playground slide. Rose nicks--half-on purpose--herself on Kanaya's fang, and suddenly there's a wet push of tongue moving across the gap between her lips. It moves with purpose and eagerness and hunger. And then it's good night, good night into the evening sun, the western forest shimmering with gold, and cricket song swallowing up the east.


	4. the light that kills.

There is a terrible thing about falling out of love, and that is that it never comes suddenly. It makes a show of dying, leaking salt tears and wailing instead of dropping dead like it ought to. But then there is the terrible thing about being in love, which is that half the time you forget it’s there, and in the moments when you are thinking about it, you are never sure if whether it is living or dying. 

“Let me in!” Vriska says at the door, the same as she’s said ten or twenty minutes before. Terezi pinches her nose shut. The episode’s going to be done in just two more minutes, and although she already knows how it’s going to end, human Law & Order is all about listening to people talk and grunt and not drama. Two more minutes, and then it’s back to dealing with Vriska—at this, she already becomes gloomy. She’d rather have her friendships, the clean and uncomplicated stuff that no one ever writes space operas for, the stuff that builds records and empires and wars, than Vriska and Karkat. But time and time again she finds herself mired, hip-deep in both of them—she’s getting bored of it, but she can’t tear herself away, she can’t make herself stop. Ah, she thinks, as Vriska jiggles the door knob. How naive she once was.

The moon bleeds palely through the blinds. The sheets smell faintly like Rose. Maybe someone’s dying on screen—she can’t tell. Terezi yawns, and shuts off the TV. 

* 

“Jesus,” Vriska says. Blasphemy is her newest, and most grating, habit. As though it weren’t bad enough that she’d damn the gods of one world, she now must spit upon every one she sees. Terezi settles onto the bed, and Vriska invites herself on, too, and this, more than the silly calling upon of gods and ghosts, is now her worst habit. There are flowers in her hair. No guesses as to how those got there. “What if I were a demon, stupid?” 

“Like you could be! You lumber like a pregnant earbeast.”

“How’d you know if they’re pregnant or not?” 

“I can smell it,” she says, grinning at the moon. 

“Liiiiaaaar,” Vriska says. She sits next to Terezi. She smells like grass and flowers. It gets even worse when she slings her cold arm over Terezi’s shoulder. When Terezi pushes the arm off, Vriska says, “What the fuck, Pyrope, you’re going to make me think you don’t like me anymore if you do that.” 

Terezi wants to say ugh, but she’s noticed the way Rose breathes in when she says it, like she’s anticipating it, and has one of her snarky remarks waiting in the wings. Not for the first time, Terezi thinks, What an ass!, but fondly. Vriska’s fingers touch her neck; she swats it off and says, “What do you want, Serket?” 

“All I wanted to do was say hi,” Vriska says. “Can’t I do that for my favorite blind-as-balls Slayer?” She grabs Terezi in a headlock, then releases her barely a second later. 

“Blind by your hand!” Terezi says, stirring a little. She hasn’t been angry about it for months; these days she says it just to get under Vriska’s skin. 

“God. You can sure hold a grudge. Get over yourself! I lost an arm in that, and seven of my eyes. And I didn’t even get any cool nasal superpowers from it.” 

“My lusus was pretty cool.” 

“So was mine,” Vriska snaps, but she turns away, black hair falling in a wave of flowers over her face. “Whatever. Yours was a dragon. That’s cool, too, I guess.” She leans on Terezi again. This time, Terezi lets her. 

She knew, when Vriska Serket showed up as her Watcher, that being with her would be a test: whether she could withstand the sheer force of Vriska’s personality without dying, whether she could, indeed, work with anyone she wanted to. But if she had known Vriska as she does now, she would have tossed the job to the next sucker in line. Military deferment and near guaranteed access to law info grubs isn’t worth the hate and the pity, the all of it and the everything. 

“I miss you,” Vriska says, and now Terezi’s full of a cold, heartless concern. What makes Vriska dangerous is that she knows how to execute. Even if Vriska can’t locate subtlety even if she were led to it, she knows how to hide and withhold long enough to make something happen. The real danger, Terezi thinks grimly, is what Vriska will do in desperation; when she wants something done, but is too angry, or frustrated, or scared to think of anything. 

“Tired of swirling your own bulge around your nook at last,” Terezi says. 

“Ugh, you sex-crazed bitch.” Vriska tugs at the collar of Terezi’s shirt, but without the desperate scramble of horniness. Terezi smacks the back of Vriska’s head. “Fuck! What?” 

“You came to me pale,” Terezi says. “You already have a moirail. That means—”

“Are you going to do your shitty Serlok Holmes—”

“—that you and Kanaya are about to do something so stupid—”

“—because I’ve been telling you for sweeps, you’re not nearly as clever as you think you are!”

“—that you want me to stop you two! A pale mediator.” 

“You just don’t understand how many irons—”

“—you have in the fires,” Terezi says. “Ugh.” 

Vriska’s breathing sounds like she’s got something stuck in her throat, like she’s broken her ribs and is struggling hard for the air; so it’s not surprising when she punches the wall. The plaster breaks off in dusty clouds, and the metal grinds as Vriska flexes her fingers, the smell bright and cold; and then there is her face, mostly black and stormy with a gilding of wan across her gray cheek. The neighbor hits the wall back, then curses when he breaks his hand. 

It’s hard to tell what she feels for Vriska Serket these days, but she thinks it’s dark as a storm, and just as messy. “Get mad at me!” she says. “Just remember what happened the last time you and Kanaya tried to be the next great pale diamond.” 

“Maybe I came because I like what a smartass know-it-all you are,” Vriska says, her voice unpleasant and hot against Terezi’s ear. “Or maybe I came because you’re my…” Her throat works, wetly, as she searches for words. In the end, she settles for grabbing Terezi’s hair, and yanking it so hard that Terezi’s glasses tumble onto the bed. “Screw you,” she says in grandiose conclusion, and headbutts Terezi square on the nose. 

“Argh!” Terezi says, grabbing onto her face. Vriska grabs Terezi by the chin, but before she can lure her in too far, Terezi swings her fist into Vriska’s armpit, the fleshy one; Vriska hisses in sudden pain, and releases Terezi. The sheets have fallen off the bed, and Terezi nearly trips on them when she climbs out, eager to grab Vriska by the scruff of her skinny neck and throw her out; but there’s another part of her that wouldn’t mind knocking Vriska to the ground and tying her up in those sheets to fucking Vriska from behind, tongue pressed into the smooth, most sensitive part of Vriska’s nook and holding onto Vriska’s hips so she can’t even thrust. Or maybe Vriska will use that metal arm to punch and rip at her until she can’t move, then throw one of Terezi’s legs onto her shoulder and fuck her there, plowing through her protests, fucking her even if she begged Vriska to stop. She hates Vriska, hates her in a way that’s like clawing through sticky, black muck instead of exhilarating and hot. Like this hate could turn her to stone if she keeps coming back. But she can’t stop it, no more than she can stop Vriska from yanking off her shirt, not caring that their horns catch in the fabric, that now she’s ruined two shirts… Not caring, either, that Terezi’s running her tongue along the too-smooth skin of the edge of her shoulder, the burned stump of flesh which terminates to cold metal—or that Terezi presses at the releases. She groans as the arm detaches, then falls, dead, onto the floor. 

“Well, great,” Vriska says, rubbing Terezi’s face with the sides of her stump a few times. “Now look what you’ve done.” 

“I did it on purpose,” Terezi says, grabbing the small, tiny remains of Vriska’s arm. She rubs her thumb against the metal connector, massages the area around it. Fewer sores than usual, she notes. Kanaya’s been taking care of Vriska. She bites into one just recently healed, and Vriska hisses, but doesn’t push her away. Vriska came to her looking for pity, Terezi realizes. This should disgust her, but it doesn’t, because Vriska isn’t her anything, not her matesprit or kismesis or moirail or auspistice. But she isn’t nothing, either. “To disarm you,” she says, and laughs. 

“Shut up,” Vriska says, and her shoulder jerks, like she’s imagining hitting Terezi with the cold instrument on the floor. “Touch my bulge, Pyrope, I only have one hand to work with here.” 

“Just use your tongue,” she says. “You doofus.” 

She expects Vriska to whip out her bulge and start jerking herself off, right there; but instead she kisses the base of Terezi’s throat, toothless and dry, then runs her tongue into the dip of her collarbone. She’s off-balance without her arm, like she’s forgotten what it’s like to be without it. Terezi remembers Vriska’s fingers laced with her own, the feel of both deeply lined palms against her hips—she wonders if Vriska’s palm still looks the same, or if it’s changed over the perigees and sweep. 

Out of dumb defiance, Vriska refuses to take Terezi’s drawstring pajama pants off, like a big “fuck you, you do it!” and instead rubs Terezi’s bulge through the fabric with her cheek, runs her tongue along the seam, slobbering and panting with such exaggeration that Terezi can hear the pathetic, “I’m not used to doing this and this tastes like shit.” Terezi’s bulge is straining towards Vriska’s mouth, and her feet are tangling in the sheets and her heels rubbing against the carpet, and her nook is wet and fluttering, desperate for touch, attention, anything. She gives in, and eases the soft cotton pants down. 

“Finally!” Vriska says, and helps Terezi strip it away. There’s another sound of Vriska stripping away her own pants with great ease, then flipping Terezi on top of her. Their bulges wrap around each other, gently, like they’re so red that they’re worried about breaking each other. Terezi’s face feels tight. When Vriska reaches for her hand, she doesn’t squeeze it immediately. Not before she lets her bulge curl around Vriska’s with aching force, and wrangle the tip of Vriska’s bulge until it’s in line with her nook. She reaches down between them, and lets her bulge loosen around Vriska’s so there’s just one loop, twisting towards the base. 

It’s easy to think of this as a simple screwing, but it’s never been simple with Vriska, who brings pitypats into their hatefucks, who ruins flushdates with ashen outbursts of listen to me, I’m so great; whose sheer pathetic gratefulness at Terezi slowly feeding Vriska’s bulge into her nook is turning Terezi red in grinds and jerks. 

What Terezi should have done was antagonize Vriska until Vriska’s own pity burned black, until Vriska facefucked her then fucked her nook with her metal fingers so hard that blood would suspend itself opaque and heavy in the genetic material leaking down her thighs. What she should have done was to ignore Vriska. But now she’s swimming in a sea of tenderness, sheltered from the rip tides by Vriska’s hand wrapped loosely around Terezi’s wrist, a grip that tightens, but never painfully, whenever Terezi comes down especially hard, or when Terezi bites her lip, trying to force the disorderly slop of emotion into anything except the pleasure of this moment. Vriska manages to grab the bucket at the foot of Terezi’s bed, and pushes them up so they’re squatting over it. Her bulge slides out of Terezi’s nook, and lashes at Terezi’s thigh, frustrated. Terezi grabs onto it and pumps it the way she knows Vriska likes, and watches the show. 

“God, you’re so uptight,” Vriska says. She adjusts her weight, so she’s half-leaning on Terezi, freeing up her arm. Terezi stands, though, and yanks Vriska to the bathroom and sits on the edge of the tub. 

“Come on,” she says, and her voice sounds distant and surreal. “Take it.” 

She knew Vriska would, but she didn’t anticipate the eagerness, the way the flesh and bone of Vriska’s fingers in her nook sparks guilt, the way the wet, _toothless_ journey down Vriska’s throat makes Terezi feel like she could do this forever, constantly falling in terrihorribad love with Vriska; but the stretch of Vriska’s fourth finger into her nook and Vriska’s wet laugh as she teases the tip of Terezi’s bulge with her tongue, wrapping it around her tongue and redirecting it into the open space between gum and lip, along the ridges of her soft palate—then releasing it and sucking it back down again. Her breath is hot on Terezi’s sheath, hot and rough and gets rougher when Terezi works her hands into her hair and pulls her in closer. She comes in a red mess, desperately in pity again, feeling sorry with this wreck of a Watcher with teal dripping across her mouth and chin, with teal spilled across her fingers, in love with this girl who’s already yawning and leaving the bathroom to make herself comfortable in her coon. Terezi runs the bath hot, and sleeps in the water, afraid that if she joins Vriska she’ll wake up out of pity-love and hate-love, left with nothing but the used up rock of her heart. But ten minutes later, Vriska comes for her, one armed and one eyed, and pulls her out of the water and back into the coon. She curls against Terezi’s back and wraps her arm around Terezi’s stomach.

This girl is going to be the death of her--it's the standard love sneer of two kismeses with a hate that burns like a razed city, swallowing people and buildings like it'll never be stopped. Vriska traces a pattern, infinite spirals and locks, into her stomach, finger and gut separated by a thin layer of slime. 

"I'm going to find your moirail and put a stake through her blood pusher," Terezi says, one last attempt to steer things into the black, but Vriska doesn't stop. Maybe she even rolls her eye. 

"Yeah," she says, and pulls her in close, like they're two lususless hatchmates. "Yeah, whatever."


End file.
